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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/29596437">MAG ???- Mother Goose</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/maplem0th/pseuds/maplem0th'>maplem0th</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>The Magnus Archives (Podcast)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Gen, No beta we die like archival assistants, Original Statement (The Magnus Archives), Rated mature for gore, Season 1, Statement Fic (The Magnus Archives), babys first fic in this fandom, martin and sasha are mentioned, season 1 jon being season 1 jon</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2021-02-21</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2021-02-21</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-16 01:47:24</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Mature</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>2,068</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/29596437</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/maplem0th/pseuds/maplem0th</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Statement of Audrey Foster, regarding a volunteer at the Kensington Central Library.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>6</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>MAG ???- Mother Goose</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>[CLICK]</p><p>[ARCHIVIST]</p><p>Statement of Audrey Foster, regarding a volunteer at the Kensington Central Library. Original statement given September 3rd, 2014. Audio recording by Jonathan Sims, Head Archivist of the Magnus Institute, London.</p><p>Statement begins.</p><p>[ARCHIVIST (STATEMENT)]</p><p>Right. So I just tell you everything I remember? Very well- by the way, will you be printing it? Ah, good. I’d hate for my story to end up in some… what’s the word? Cloud? Call me a “Boomer” or whatever the kids say but I’ve never trusted it. I always need something physical, to be able to hold what I’m reading in my hands. An e-reader doesn’t come close to the smell of an old book, the sensation of real, proper fiction in your grasp.  I’m sure you understand me, what with all the books you keep in here. Yours aren’t to be shared, though.</p><p>Mine are. I haven’t always been a librarian. Teaching was my place for most of my career but I… left that behind me about a decade ago, now. Wasn’t working out for me, I told myself. I’m much happier where I am now.</p><p> </p><p>Ever since I got to work here, all I’ve wanted is to pass my enthusiasm for literature to the next generation. As a little girl, I could spend all night with my nose in a book, hiding under the covers so Mum didn’t catch me staying up long after bedtime. Nowadays you’d be pulling the little ones away from their play stations and ex-boxes or whatever they’re called, not from a novel. It’s a shame, I think. Not that I’m one to just grumble about things instead of fixing them- from my first day here I’ve been dedicated to doing something about it. And do something about it I have! I’ve always encouraged development of the children’s area- refurbishments and upgrades, setting up workshops and talks, activity days. We get plenty of young visitors, even bigger ones, and I like to see the library as a sort of local community hub. I’m very pleased with what I’ve accomplished. Ah... I’m getting distracted, aren’t I?  Sorry. I’ll get to my story. The volunteer.</p><p> </p><p>We brought in a new activity a few months ago. It was originally just a summer holidays thing but it’s probably going to continue once after them. On a Saturday afternoon, we have someone come in to read a story to the children. Sometimes it’d be a visiting author or some other professional- hell, until recently  I’d have been more than happy to make a reading myself- but usually, there was a backlog of eager volunteers. Storytime is at three, but about a month ago, the volunteer showed up at eleven o’clock, just as I was heading in for my shift at the front desk. She half looked like a character from a story herself- have you ever read that book about the little psychic girl? Mathilda, I think. She looked like the young teacher from that, all pretty and blonde and gentle and smiley. A good, thick storybook was nestled under her shoulder, but didn’t seem to have a title on the front from what I could make out of the cover. A picture of a white bird stood on a sky blue background. She spoke before I could ask if she needed anything.</p><p>“I’m here to read to the children.”</p><p>I told her certainly, thank-you for offering to help but the session isn’t for a few hours and could she come back then? There was a moment of hesitance before she smiled serenely, nodded and walked out of sight. I don’t think she ever left- I saw her in the library cafe at one, and again at two. She didn’t seem to have ordered anything, just… sat at a table with the book open, staring at a bookplate on the back of the front cover. My rounds don’t exactly leave time for a coffee, so I couldn’t go any closer to read it in more detail. She didn’t seem to have moved at all between my sightings, now I think about it. It wasn’t something I’d really dwelled on at the time, but in hindsight…?</p><p> </p><p>I don’t usually supervise storytime, but something in me made me feel like I should this time. She was already sitting in the usual seat in the corner of the children’s section when I got there surrounded by cross-legged little ones eager to listen to what she had to say. When she saw me she lifted her head up from them to face me, and that’s when I noticed her eyes were closed. They’d been closed when she told me she was here to read to the children. The only time I’d seen her with them open was in the cafe, staring at the book now nestled neatly in her lap.</p><p>The sensation that flooded through my entire being as she opened her eyes and looked directly into mine is something I do not think I would ever be able to describe. A deep, penetrating, sickening dread, an unrelenting sense something was reaching deep into my core with a million grasping hands, grabbing something never meant to see daylight and dropping it bloody and flailing and screaming on the ground at my feet like a cat that offers her master a disembowelled, dying sparrow. Or perhaps it was I that was the bird, viscera scattered for all to see? Who was her master?</p><p>I tried not to think too hard about it. A brief dizzy spell, that’s all. Nothing to worry about. As I regained my composure, I noticed she hadn’t broken eye contact.</p><p>“Right then,” she said, as serene and gentle as she’d been when I first saw her, “why don’t we get started?”</p><p>She opened the book to a blank page, stared just as deeply as she had in the cafe, and cleared her throat. The children seemed entranced.</p><p>“This story is about a girl who’s friends called her Nell. She was a little bit bigger than you are. Nell was a very clever girl. She worked hard in school, and her teachers loved her.”</p><p>Coincidence. It's a coincidence, I kept internally repeating.</p><p>“This evening, Nell was staying at school later than normal. She had lots of work to do, and she felt like she could focus better in the school library. Children aren’t supposed to stay so late, but her teacher had given her permission, so it was perfectly fine! Nell wrote and wrote and wrote, until her hands started to ache. That made her realise it was probably time for her to take a break, so she stood up to go for a walk around the school. She asked her teacher if she could and was told yes! Her teacher thought she was a wonderful, smart young lady. Nell helped out in lessons whenever she was asked to, and often when she wasn’t. She could be trusted to be by herself”</p><p>She was staring at me again, and once again the twitching corpse of a secret laid at my feet. It was true though. Nell Lovelace was a wonderful, smart young lady. I could trust her to be by herself.</p><p>“It was about seven o’clock when Nell went for her walk. Nobody is supposed to be here at seven o’clock in the evening, so none of the lights were turned on, and Nell didn’t know where the switches were. That was alright, though! Her teachers trusted her to be here, and she could feel her way around.”</p><p>Meeting and concentrating on the volunteer’s eye contact was better than focusing on her story. It didn’t block out what she was saying at all, but I suppose it was a placebo at the time? All I could see was Nell looking up at me as I told her it was alright for her to stay.</p><p>“Nell found it very hard to feel her way around, wandering those dark halls until her arm was rested enough. So hard, in fact, she didn’t notice when she took a wrong turn.”</p><p>I brace for impact. I only saw her leaving the library, and the aftermath- and God, I did not want to know what came in between</p><p>“Nell learned she’d walked into the stairwell when her foot missed the first step and she tripped down it. And the next step, and the next. Such a long flight of stairs!”</p><p>A few of the children giggle.</p><p>“Her skull went bump, bump, bump on each step, and a little crack began to form. The crack grew bigger and bigger with each stair, until… crack! And blood pours out, from her head and pale and watery from her nose and ears. You’d think it was just some spilt juice if Nell wasn’t laid in it, but the water was called cerebrospinal fluid. If she hadn’t been twitching on the ground, vertebrae shattered beyond repair and arms and legs bent in all the wrong places, she’d probably have been able to tell you what cerebrospinal fluid is. Her teacher, Mrs Foster, had told her so.“</p><p>They knew. They knew. They knew. The children explode into a cacophony of laughter.</p><p>“Mrs Foster told her many many things. She’d thought she wouldn’t tell her anything that would hurt her, but it seems that the clever girl wasn’t so clever this time, hm?”</p><p>I would have reminded the children that this was a library and that they should be quiet, but the noise was ever so slightly drowning out the mental image of Nell, mangled out of recognisability at the bottom of the staircase, twitching and gurgling as the life leaked from her fractured skull.</p><p>My therapist, paid for by the headteacher for the first few sessions, tried to convince me it wasn’t my fault. All I could think about was the look on her face, excited to have one of the new computers to herself. And that was just when I walked into the library- you can probably guess how I felt when I walked up those stairs. I lasted another month, but ended up quitting teaching entirely not long after the divorce went through. It was a needed change. A fresh start. Why did she have to tell everyone what I’d done? Nobody else seemed to bring up the story’s… contents, not even with how graphic it got, and I didn’t want to either. I checked my emails and saw one from about twelve. From this week’s volunteer- she’d fallen ill and wouldn’t be able to come in as she’d hoped.</p><p>I told the other staff members I had a headache and went home early. It turned into a “migraine” that persisted for about two weeks. By then I could enter the children’s section without seeing the visitors mangled on the play mat.</p><p>Term starts again in a few days, so the library’s going to be far less busy. I can’t wait.</p><p>[ARCHIVIST]</p><p>Statement ends.</p><p>“Story” aside, most of this statement seems plausible. I had Sasha do some digging and she found a few news articles from 2001 about a schoolgirl, one Miss Lovelace dying in a freak accident. Not that I’m going to ask how she got ahold of their payrolls from the time, but she did find out Ms Foster worked at the school where it happened around that time. Very tragic, but nothing supernatural. As for the volunteer, it’s more likely a  poorly timed prank than anything else. Exposing children to gratuitous violence for her own amusement, I suppose? What happened to Ms Foster is most likely a combination of coincidence and connecting dots that aren’t there. If you’ve been through something traumatic it’s easy to find things to associate it with. I’d say “callous prankster” is more likely than “evil psychic babysitter”, in any case.</p><p>For once Martin proves himself useful. I suppose he’s using the skills he got at charming the elderly he gained looking into the Rentoul case? Regardless, he managed to convince the library staff to let him into their old guest books and checked every Saturday in the summer holidays of 2014. In early August, he came across one who hadn’t seemed to write down an entry time, only that they checked out at 4 PM. One “M. Goose.” That’s a common fairytale character if I remember correctly? “Mother Goose.” It’s probably a false name the fake volunteer used.</p><p>Recording ends.</p><p>[CLICK]</p><p> </p>
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